In personal communication systems, PCS, there are a number of base stations each having the capacity to handle the telephone conversations from two to four PCS wireless handsets at a time. These base stations are connected to local and remote switches which are controlled by a central processor. The remote switches may be co-located with the central processor or may be interconnected to the central processor via the public network. The central processor directly controls the local switch. Each remote switch is controlled by a remote processor. In general, all maintenance and administration information is communicated to the remote processors via primary rate interface, PRI, links either directly or indirectly through the public network connected to the local switch and central processor. However, maintenance problems can occur in the remote switch that cannot be resolved by control information transmitted via the PRI links. In present PCS systems, there are only two options for resolving such maintenance problems. The first is to send a service technician to the site of the remote switch to manually perform the necessary restart operations. Another alternative is to have an independent telephone link to each remote switch from the central processor; whereby, the central processor can perform the restart operations via the independent telephone link.
The first solution suffers from the problems of high cost and inconvenience to users of the PCS wireless handsets while the remote switch is not functioning properly. The problem with the second solution is that in many countries it is difficult to get installation of telephone links. In addition, these telephone links are quite expensive. The expense becomes an important factor, since each remote switch may only handle a small number of base stations, and an individual base station can only provide service to two or four PCS handsets at any time.
This problem has not risen in cellular mobile telecommunications systems, since a base station in a cellular mobile telecommunications systems handles a large number of wireless handsets. The cost of providing an independent telephone link to a cellular mobile base station is insignificant in light of the high equipment costs of such a base station.
What is lacking in the prior art is a cost effective method for providing administration maintenance of remote systems.